Richard Adams

Richard Adams was born in the English countryside—an evocative, lush place he would later use as the setting for his most famous novel, Watership Down. The son of a well-to-do doctor, Adams attended the prestigious Oxford University, though his education was interrupted when he was called to serve in the British Army during World War II. After leaving the army in 1946, Adams finished his degree at Oxford and went on to join the British Civil Service, eventually working in the Department of the Environment. He had a love for storytelling, and when he began telling a story about a group of rabbits to his two young daughters, they urged him to write the tale down. Adams wrote Watership Down and began sending it to agents and publishers; it was rejected several times before at last being acquired by a publisher named Rex Collins. The book sold a million copies worldwide in its first few years in print and has gone on to become recognized as a modern classic. Adams was the writer-in-residence at universities in England and the U.S. and also became active in the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Adams continued writing all his life. He and in December of 2016 in Oxford at the age of 96.